Rain is with us

The rain has been going on with few breaks for days now. The mud is starting to appear around the smallholding. As is traditional the pigs area is the first to go. They had already done a good job of turning it all over so it didn't take long with a bit of rain to turn into serious mud. Luckily they are tall enough now so that they are out of it most of the time. I was hoping that during the weekend we could fence them off a new area so they have some grass. However a forecast of rain all weekend has meant the CSA day is cancelled and so I am not sure we'll get it done. However I will do at some stage in the next week. I'm letting the pigs in an area to do some ploughing for me. They can root up any potatoes left in the ground, which is great for blight prevention. They will also turn over the soil ready for it to be grown in next year. This year we grew squash and potatoes here. Next year I am hoping to make the area much larger and growing some fodder crops for both the pigs and the sheep. It's handy that we can keep the pigs happy and get all that work done it one go. It might save me from having to hire a Rotavator in the spring.

I have put it off long enough now and I am going to have to bite the bullet and get some decorating done. As it's pouring down at the weekend I might have to actually have to get going with it.

The chicks are all now getting quite large but still none of them have either layed an egg or cock-a-doodled. I thought I heard one of them cock-a-doodle several weeks ago but it must have been me as I haven't heard anything since. As it's coming into winter it could now be a good while before the girls start to lay. We suspect that the Light Sussex is a cockerel but it's only a guess as he's so much bigger than the rest.

The sheep are getting to the time of the year where their feet start to be an issue. I have already have to deal with two of them going lame in the last week or two. One seems to be on the mend. The other one still doesn't seem to be right. They also start to look rather bedraggled on stormy or wet mornings as they tend to wedge themselves as deep as they can into the hedge (this hedge is about 12 feet wide and you can walk around inside it). So they appear looking soggy and with various branches and brambles stuck in their wool. One of the lambs left us a week or so ago and we now have more excellent lamb in the freezer. We have already had liver and bacon, liver pate as well as some great lamb shanks. Still haven't done anything with the wool from the sheep. I'll add it to the list of winter jobs.

Autumn foraging

Life for me at Leconfield Grange seems to have slowed down a little over the last few weeks. Harriett's birthday has now passed and we have done our last market for a while. Leaving the markets has really freed up a lot of time at the weekends. The kids are a bit sad they loved it. They liked selling things and buying things. They would disappear for hours (literally) working out how they were going to spend the £2.50 they had with them. They became experts at getting the price on anything they wanted as low as possible. Imogen's technique of paying for everything in coppers and counting them very slowly proved a particularly effective one. In terms of selling things we are now just concentrating on the Bakery, jars and Community Supported Agriculture Pork.

The chicks we have are doing well and getting big. They are still not full size and still no clues yet as to which are cockerels and which will be layers. Only time will tell. All the chickens have the run together during the day, but the respective chicks still go back to their own house at night at the moment. The old chickens have a new house (well newish they have had it for a few months now) and for some reason several of them are refusing to perch in it. That means most nights when I go to shut their door I end up trying to get them to perch. Trying to lean into a hen house and balance a chicken which is half asleep on a perch is not an easy task. It doesn't always work either. There is always a lot of flapping and squawking. One of them always perches fine then 10 seconds later jumps off to settle to sleep in the egg box!

The lambs are all doing well and getting big. One of them is booked in to leave us in a couple of weeks. It would be nice to keep them all to Hoggets (year old) or Mutton but we just don't have the grass to manage it. The Ewe's and Lambs are separated at the moment for weaning. We have only had one or two escapes from the separate areas so hopefully in a couple of weeks it should have worked. As the lambs are almost as big as the Ewe's it was getting a bit silly them still having milk. It'll be time to get the Ram in before too long to start the process over again. I think second lambing season should hopefully be easier and less stressful than the first. 

I Have been busy in the polytnnel working on a central bed in there. Until a few days ago the centre was a messy load of grass and weeds. They are all up now and a bed is mostly dug. Just a bit more digging to do and then I need to make the paths around the edge and get a load of horse manure in there. That should be ready just in time for my seedlings which are going to need transplanting soon. Hopefully these seedlings will be large enough to provide me with greens over winter and some plants will go dormant and ready to grow really early in the spring like Cauliflower. Last year we had some successes like Mizuna (a type of mustard leaf that went mad) while over wintered carrots and beetroots were like bullets, even once cooked. Why I decided the hot weather last week was a good time to start digging in there I am not sure. It was baking. This week looks much better weather for digging and working in the shelter of the polytunnel. 

Autumn is always my favorite foraging season and it's going well this year. I like the fact I can now forage in my own field. I wonder sometimes then the difference between foraging and gardening. I think I forage for things that growing naturally and I don't help them, while gardening is where I help the plants. Foraging is clearly the easier option and is coming up trumps. I have 3 gallons of Elderberry wine just fermenting, two gallons of Plum wine (I had to go further afield for the plumbs) and a load of apples ready for crab apple jelly. I am also gradually collecting Sloe's for the customary Sloe Gin and I think I might have a go at making Sloe wine to. I tried some at the Humber Bridge Market and it seemed pretty good.

Leconfield Grange CSA up and running

We have just had our first Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) day yesterday and it was fantastic. Almost everyone who is involved in Pork for Christmas came along (as did another family) and we worked on a new pig run. We started with simply a pile of equipment and a patch of ground. In an amazingly short space of time the fence posts were up, fencing attached, pig house in place and filled with straw and electric fencing and posts installed and tested. After a lunch together in the field we then popped the pigs in the dog crate and carried them out into the field. They seemed really happy being outside (having spent a couple of days in the barn). They were happily munching grass in no time and seemed to get the hang of the electric fence after only about one shock each. Our previous pigs have taken much longer. So a brilliant day and a really positive launch to our CSA project.

The chicks are getting bigger and are now integrating in with the rest of the chickens. They have their own houses and food but the runs are now all joined together so during the day all the chickens are together. They have their proper plumage now so I know what breed most of them are. However none of them are big enough yet to lay an egg or go cock a doodle doo. It's a good job to really as none of them are big enough for eating yet either.

We have just separated the lambs from the Ewe's so that they wean. The lambs are now nearly as big as the Ewe's and still having milk so it's about time for that to stop. A few of our CSA members helped us catch and separate the sheep which was a great help. The sheep are now much tamer than they were when they arrive, but still don't like being caught and get really jumpy if they think we are trying to get them. However, luckily for us, they do find it very hard to resist the lure of food. So now we have the lambs in the field closest to us baa-ing (is that a word?) for their Mums so they can have milk. The Ewe's on the other hand seem to be really happy together enjoying a peaceful life. We'll need to think about getting the Tup (Ram) in to see them again before long.

All the hard work on vegetables over the spring is now really paying off. I haven't had a delivery from the Greengrocer for ages. We have courgettes galore (for those of you who grow your own I am sure you are used to the usual glut of Courgettes these over-active plants produce, now imagine two in a polytunnel it's like a courgette plants on steroids, the veg draw of my fridge is full, just of courgettes!). We have loads of beetroot, two bags of harvested potatoes , runner beans, onions, garlic, squashes just coming ripe and sweetcorn. The sweetcorn is amazing. Like peas it's one of those veg where, when eaten within minutes of picking, the flavour and sweetness is stunning. Not going to be so good over winter as all my winter veg was eaten by slugs in the spring. However I have planted some things for the winter in the polytunnel, so we should hopefully be at least kept in salad green over winter and hopefully a little more.
As it moves to autumn I am again forced to think about decorating, much as I would like to spend more time in the poytunnel building much needed beds instead. So the lounge is going to have to be worked on. The carpet will finally go and I'll have to start stripping the wall paper as soon as I start running out of excuses why I'm not doing it.

Just in case we were a bit low on animals we now have a kitten (Imogen got her for Harriett for her birthday). She is very cute and wants to play at night while the kids are asleep and sleep in the day. When I get time in the evening to catch up on a few things (like now) she likes to attack while I am trying to type, write or move in any way really. She is lots of fun, but I am looking forward to her going outside so we can get rid of the cat litter which she seems to like to spread around the kitchen (and which Ted uses as a snack box!). On that delightful note I think I will finish.

Back from holiday

Having been away for a week in Turkey enjoying the sunshine we are back in Yorkshire enjoying the smallholding. As always there is lots to do here at this time with vegetables and grass all growing like mad. It's great having so much veg suddenly coming through. We now have loads of beetroot, potatoes, courgettes and runner beans. The cucumbers, tomatoes and sweetcorn are almost ready and the Aubergines in the polytunnel are starting to take shape. It's pretty exciting actually growing an Aubergine, it makes the polytunnel feel like it's really worthwhile. I am starting to exhaust my courgette recipe supply though, so if anyone has any good ones then do let me know. 

Christine and Kevin did a stunning job looking after the smallholding while we were away and ended up with a far more involved job than they bargained for. Unfortunately one of our lambs got fly strike, a really nasty thing where maggots grow inside the lambs flesh. It got lots of care, attention and medicine but did not make it through, poor thing. Kevin and Michael spent the week (when not nursing sick lambs) gardening. For those of you who have followed previous blogs you may realise this is not a simple matter of a bit of delicate weeding but trying to tame a jungle and turn it into a garden. The weeds in undeveloped areas are large, tangled and everywhere. They cleared a huge area and the garden is moving further and further from being a jungle. My Mum is visiting for a few days later this week and so with her help we should be able to move even further on with it. 

The Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) project is really starting to take shape. We now have a good few people wanting Pork for September and Pork for Christmas. If you are interested at all then get in touch as I need to know final details for both very soon. The idea (very briefly) is that to be a member you sign up for a half or quarter pig. You sign up at the beginning of the process when the new piglets arrive. You get to meet the piglets and be involved, having a say in how they are reared. At the end of it you receive very tasty, rare breed, slow grown pork. You know how the pigs were treated and have a real connection with where your food has come from. For more details see our web site www.leconfieldgrange.org This project has been an idea for a long time and is is really great to see it now starting to become a reality.

The chicks are now getting large and quite ugly. They have gone past the cute fluffy chick stage. They are now at the stubby feathers, bits of fluff here and feathers growing there stage. We can start to see which breeds we have. I believe we have one cuckoo Marran, one Light Sussex and then some others I have yet to identify. The key question is whether they are cocks (one to be a cockerel and the rest as eaters) or layers. The only way to know is either sex them at birth (a highly skilled job we can't do here) or (as we have to do) wait until they either cock a doodle doo, or lay an egg. They should do one or the other in time. As a happy coincidence as they first cock a doodle doo is a perfect time for eating them! I can't quite what I would like more, more layers or a good few chicken roasts.

Chicks soon on the way

I think since my last post the lambs have gone back to being as grubby as ever. The children and lambs did really well at the Driffield Show. They were in the show ring for over half an hour. I thought either the lambs or the children would get bored in that time but they all did really well. The lambs were really cooperative and the children were really good with them. The kids both got rosettes for doing so well. Harriett also got a prize for her embroidery and Imogen got one for her handwriting in the handicraft tent, so both of them were very pleased. I entered a few things in the handicrafts and got nothing at all. Clearly I need to take some hints and tips from the kids. 

The fat lambs (Mary and Tilly who we bottle raised) are now living in the field with the other sheep and lambs. They all seem to get along together fine although at the moment they seem to go around in two distinct groups rather than all together.

The pigs are getting bigger and friendlier. They like to give you a good nudge with their noses as you go and see them and you always end up filthy when visiting them. They have been making good use of their wallow during the hot weather and rolling in the mud to keep cool and protect themselves from the sun. They do all have quite a personality, but being pigs are all very food driven. At the moment they are enjoying eating the used barley from my beer brewing yesterday. We are having a month of going to the market this month as I have booked to cycle the way of the Roses with my Dad. We should have a great three days and it's quite nice not to have such a busy build up week and weekend as usual. 

I have been working recently on setting up a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) scheme here with raising Pork on CSA principals. They have a web site if you are interested in what it is all about and there will be lots more information about it on social media after the weekend of biking.

Max our nephew was here last week raising money for an expedition he is doing to Cambodia next year. It was quite handy as he arrived just as our tractor mower returned from being repaired. Unfortunately being 30 years old (the tractor not Max) means finding parts for it is not always easy and a part had to be sources and shipped from the US for it to work properly again. So Max did lots of mowing and driving as well as animals feeding, chicken house building, trailer cleaning and loads of other useful jobs. I think the early mornings were a bit of a shock for him, especially as Harriett tended to wake him up by jumping on him at quite an early hour.

We are now enjoying quite a few veg fresh from the field that are growing well. We have had peas and broad beans for a while but they are coming to an end now. We have new potatoes that we dig up on demand, beetroot and a wide supply of salad leaves. The courgettes are about to come into season as well. I already need to start planning the polytunnel planting for winter and early spring veg. It seems a long way off but if I don't sort it before long the opportunity for planting will be gone. 

The chickens are doing well with two of them now brooding. That means we have 14 eggs being sat on at the moment. Bantums 6 eggs should hopefully hatch on Friday (while I am away biking) with the remained hatching next Tuesday. We will then hopefully have lots of chicks. We will keep one male as a cockerel and the rest are for eating. Most of the females we will keep as additional layers. It's always exciting when new animals are about to arrive and we haven't raised chicks for a few years now. 

Lamb washing

I have just spent almost an hour with the children attempting to wash the lambs ahead of the Driffield Show next week. The kids have now got quite good at getting the lambs to walk around on a lead. They don't just lie down and protest any more. However once it came to being washed the lambs were not so sure. I spoke to a few people showing sheep at the Great Yorkshire show yesterday and they assured me that the best way to wash the sheep is simply with cold water. Well Harriett, Imogen and I have got a lot of cold water over us and slightly more over the sheep and I am not convinced how clean they actually are right now. They are certainly an improvement on what they were, but I would hardly call them whiter than white. I think maybe I ought to find some sort of sheep shampoo to help with the process. I don't want to accidentally felt their wool though while it is still on their back. 

They were very small and very cute back in early spring. They are big lambs now

The three of us have also entered several other events at the show. The kids are doing handwriting, drawing and sewing. I am entering some bread and preserves. I have to re-jar my marmalade so that it has a sellaphane lid and wax seal as per the instructions. I had a word with a judge at a show in Beverley last year so got a few hints and tips. Apparently I need to clean the jar with white spirit on the outside to remove all fingerprints. So next Wednesday will prove to be a busy day. I also realised yesterday that the lambs will need ear tags before we can move them to the show (DEFRA rules). I ordered them today but it's a bit touch and go with them arriving on time, so fingers crossed. 

It is only a few days to go until the end of term. I think both the kids and I are looking forward to that. We seem to have managed to book in loads of things over the holidays as usual. Zoe has just booked us a holiday to Turkey later in August. It will be nice to get away and have someone else do the cooking.

Two of our chickens have gone broody so we now have 15 eggs that are being sat on. Hopefully in just over twenty one days we will have 15 chicks. Last time we did this we only got one chick from six eggs, so we'll see what happens. We are hoping to gain a few more layers in the process as well as a new cockerel. Any extras will, I think, be for the dinner table. It will be nice to have some fresh chicken raised here on the smallholding. That reminds me that this week we have been enjoying our first lamb. It tastes great. We had some lamb chops the day it came back from the butcher. Tonight we had an excellent Shepherds pie. It really does have a lot of flavour. As the lamb was about 15 months old the chops were a good size, none of those tiny chops that you can sometimes get.

I managed to break the Kitchen Aid while preparing bread for the last farmers market (I think it is getting a bit over worked). I am thinking about trying to concentrate on selling bread locally instead of the markets as I really am struggling to make the quantity of bread required to make it worthwhile going to the market.

I've been revising the idea of setting up a Community Supported Agriculture project here. It looks quite an interesting idea, but I have to do a lot more reading and research now so I can put a plan together. I am looking at the possibility of raising pigs on this basis, so if you are interested, watch this space.

Lets hope all goes well at the Driffield show and we come home with a rosette or two. Imogen could certainly do well if there is a category for sheep handler with the least teeth. She has lost her two front ones and is about to loose a third next to them.

Baking and planting

I am finally feeling for the first time in about two months that I am about where I should be with planting. Back in March I was very keen, got in the seed catalogue and ordered every veg and fruit under the sun. At that stage the veg patch was little more than a grassy field. Seed planting, being a quick and fairly easy job was done in March and April with huge quantities of seeds planted. However once it came to planting them out and having beds ready the whole process got a lot slower and since then there has constantly been far more seedlings to plant out than I have prepared space for or have time to do. However finally after a days digging yesterday I have almost caught up with myself and there are only a few seedlings now left needing planting out. All of this has meant that most things have gone out rather late so fingers crossed about how it goes.

Some things are growing really well. Strawberries which I got in last year are producing loads of fruit despite the slugs and being nibbled by the sheep twice earlier in the year. Broads beans are coming on well as are peas beetroot and sweetcorn. Lettuce as usual is varied with some doing well and others being a constant battle with my arch enemy the slug. All the Brassicas I have tried to plant (Kale, Brussel sprouts, broccoli) has all been destroyed by a combination of slug attack and being dug up by birds. I'm giving up on them until next year when I am going to need a serious plan to keep them alive. It is quite nice at the moment to have fresh salad leaves every day and fresh strawberries every other day.

Our tractor mower is still at the menders with a new part coming over from the states to get it going again. I suppose having a thirty year old tractor will mean it's parts wear out and they won't always be the easiest to get hold of. It is a slow job keeping the grass down with a push petrol mower so I am hoping the part arrives soon.
I have started selling bread locally between markets. I have managed to sell a few loaves just in the first few days so that's a good start. It's the market again in just over a week and after a bit of a slow one last month we are really gearing up to have a good day there. I have just made some Elderflower cordial today so I am hoping it will be warm on market day as it's a perfect drink for a hot day. I am also hoping to make a load of Elderflower delight (like Turkish delight) before then to sell.

The girls have decided they want to show Mary and Tilly (the two lambs we bottle reared) at the Driffield Show. So for the last three days they have twice a week popped a halter on them and tried to pursuade the lambs that they want to go where they are told. Harriett has found from the start that Tilly is being quite uncooperative and is not keen on being dragged anyewhere. She is however quite keen on dragging Harriett around where possible. Imogen is having more luck and Mary seems to be a little more coopertiave and certainly at the first attempt she walked happily with Imogen. However as the days have gone on she seems to have got slightly more awkward and is taking a bit more cajoling to stop just eating grass and actually walk somewhere.

It has been pretty busy and hectic recently and I am quite looking forward to the summer holidays, although I can feel already things beginning to calm down as we head towards them.

Keeping up with the weeds and slugs

The lambs now are growing really fast. They are spending more and more time together and away from their Mums. They are usually found in a group sleeping or playing together as a four. They are very playful and are often jumping, climbing or running around together. Their mothers still look like goats with their lack of wool, but our shearer did such a neat job they look quite good still. Our last adult who has not had any lambs is definitely male, as became much more obvious once he was sheared. He is destined for the pot very soon and so we can then have our first lamb meat. I believe at 18 months they still count as lamb. I would like to keep some until they are mutton to try but we only have limited grass so this might be tricky. We are trying to work out at the moment how many we can keep over winter as the amount of winter grass is limited. 

Mary and Tilly the orphaned lambs are currently living in with the chickens. Out tractor mower is at the menders and so the grass in their and other places is getting rather high. So I've sent the lambs in to try and bring it down. They are working on it slowly, but I did notice today that they have started to make a dent on it. The grass is so high in there it's easy to loose the chickens and they have warn little chicken paths in various places through the grass and nettles. 

Our pigs seem to be permanently hungry, more so than the last pigs we have. You seem to have to pop a bit of food over the fence before going in with them otherwise they try and nibble at your ankles. They are happily settled and showing no more signs of escaping. They have started seriously rooting up their run and apart from the toilet area, all the grass is gone. However there are a few green areas where nettles and Thistles grow that they don't seem to like.

We now have a cleared out a barn we are converting into a small shop. It is quite nice inside panelled out in wood, not just stone and spiders webs. I am hoping we can open this fairly soon, I did even got my first customer in the shop yesterday. 

The Hay Festival we went to was really interesting. The kids got to meet lots of authors and illustrators. They managed to get their pigs drawn by one of the illustrators and so we have the picture now at home. I found a talk about beer which I thought was great. Books of course can be about everything and so this lady had written a book about beer and her talk included tastings. Who could argue? We also took our Canoe down the river Wye a couple of times while we were there. It was nice to have a break, but equally good to get back home at the end. Especially as Kevin and Christine (who had been looking after the animals) had cleaned up the back patio in our absence. It looks fantastic now.

 It was amazing how much everything had grown in the week we had been away.

The polytunnel and plants are coming on well although it's a constant battle with the slugs at the moment. They are everywhere. Last month I tried parasitic worms but they didn't seem to have much effect. I am now onto slug pellets. I have always avoided these in the past due to their effect on other wildlife, but I have done some research and found some organic ones that seem to manage to kill off the slugs without effecting the rest of the food chain (apart from the fact that there are less slugs). I am hoping that these will at least make a dent in the huge slug population that we seem to have in the field. I sometimes worry I am getting a bit slug obsessed. Zoe thinks I am. But the little buggers do just eat the little seedlings that plant out having looked after them for weeks.

I think it's sausage making at the weekend as we have run out and have a freezer full of meat to turn into sausages. Hopefully I'll have finally planted out all the seedlings soon as well, it's starting to get quite late.